Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who has called a snap general election for July 4, has vowed to reintroduce National Service for young people if his party is returned to government. The scheme will involve one year of military service or community volunteering, mirroring a 2010 bid by then-Conservative leader David Cameron to introduce “National Citizen Service.” The scheme was a flop and has cost UK taxpayers hundreds of millions with little to show for it.
National Service, abolished in 1960, formerly involved 18 months of military service as the less-diminished United Kingdom, still boasting much of its Empire, faced the Soviet Union along the Iron Curtain. Sunak’s version would largely involve volunteering, for one weekend a month over 12 months, with the National Health Service (NHS), fire brigades, and other organizations.
The military component would be “selective,” with only 30,000 youths accepted annually. Nevertheless, there are significant misgivings about the scheme, with the Conservative leadership increasingly obsessed with escalating clashes with the Russian Federation.
In January, former Foreign Secretary and Conservative Party leader Lord William Hague said the restoration of National Service was needed to challenge Russia, lambasting young people as having “a lot of rights without any responsibility to protect them.”
However, Hague has never served himself. Nor has Sunak, his Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, his Foreign Secretary David Cameron, nor arch-war hawk Boris Johnson, who recently endorsed Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi Azov Brigade.
Restoring National Service was once a popular idea among grassroots conservatives, but support has collapsed as the military has been overtaken by Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) enthusiasts pushing leftist ideology and unlawfully discriminating against white people.
